Online Public Relations Thoughts

Daily entries on Public Relations and communications ideas and trends

Friday, May 16, 2014

Culture Change

One of the hardest communications tasks is to facilitate culture change -- getting people to think and act differently. It is the challenge facing The New York Timesand an internal call to action has been leaked to the media. How do you get reporters and editors to think beyond the printed page? That is what they were trained for, what they report for and what they write. The study notes that reporters still evaluate themselves on whether they make the front page or not. This is an internal PR challenge that the news organization has to surmount. It is going to take a prolonged effort and the Times doesn't have much time left. Were I PR counsel to the company, I would advise a massive training program, strong incentives for online work and personnel changes where needed to shake the newsroom to its core. It will be interesting to see if something like this happens now that a new Executive Editor is in place. The Times has a deep well of talent, but it needs equally strong leadership.